WHAT DISTINGUISHES OUR PARTY – The line
running from Marx to Lenin to the foundation
of the Third International and the birth
of the Communist Party of Italy in Leghorn
(Livorno) 1921, and from there to the struggle
of the Italian Communist Left
against the degeneration in Moscow
and to the rejection of popular fronts
and coalition of resistance groups
– The tough work of restoring the revolutionary
doctrine and the party organ, in contact
with the working class, outside the realm
of personal politics and electoralist manoevrings
After years of non-stop crises, overcome only to relapse into even deeper
ones, after two years of a pandemic which has contributed to block the
gears of production, of transport, of the realization of surplus-value,
world capitalism turns to its infernal ritual of war in order to survive.
Faced with the historical and contingent failure of its mode of
production, war, destroying every rule and value, resetting debts and
credits to zero, is the final resource of capitalism to resolve all its
slopes, its crises, and to begin again its monstrous cycle, a bath of
youth.
The armed world war between capitals is already being fought today on the
Ukrainian front.
It has been decided and prepared for a long time and all the states of the
world are involved in it: in agreement they stir up a frenzied chauvinist
propaganda and multiply the allocations for rearmament, as if what is
already deadly in the world arsenals was not enough.
It still looks like a local war, by proxy, but in reality it opposes, in
the old and exhausted bourgeois Europe, two imperial fronts, made of
states, financial consortia, military apparatuses, centers of
accumulation.
All indiscriminately bastions of counter-revolution. Because the real and
only enemy of the states, of all the bourgeois states, is the working
class, is the international communism that materially, in things
themselves, is pressing to be born.
U.S. imperialism, which boasts of the strongest and most trained war
machine, has once again gathered under its command and suddenly brought
back to order the recalcitrant components of that fictitious supra-state
unit that is the European Union.
But this array of thieves, which seems inspired, solid and definitive, is
not necessarily so at the final test. For the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie
of big industry and big global finance, it is important, necessary, to
make war, with whom and against whom is a secondary matter. In every state
the propaganda of war will meekly adapt to any reversal of the front.
That is why the Communist Party will not be moved nor will it push the
international proletariat under one flag or another, nailed to the lie of
defending its country, its "fatherland".
The end of the Russian empire
The end of the badly called Soviet Union - which was capitalist long
before - dates from the first days of December 1991. At the end of that
December, the agreement that sanctioned its dissolution was signed:
Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were the signatories. From that moment on, a
crucial turning point in the history of Europe began, and a more complex
and deadly game between the most powerful imperialism in the West, the
USA, the States of the Eastern bloc area, which were returning to their
European matrix, and the Republics of the defunct USSR.
The game of the Cold War changed its rules, along with some of its
players, and swept into other, wider scenarios: the chessboards of the
clash between imperialisms widened. In the meantime, a new formidable
competitor, China, arose and the Euro-Asian one was reduced in size.
NATO, the armed arm of the USA in Europe, which at that point should have
been dissolved due to exhaustion of its functions, since the main opponent
had imploded, reducing its military and political raison d’être, had
instead new development, gradually incorporating the old states of the
defunct Warsaw Pact. Woe to the defeated.
Ukrainian ambiguity
The process of dismemberment did not initially affect Ukraine. However,
the former republic had been a black beast for the USSR and had always
maintained an anti-centralist tendency in its structure, with nationalist
connotations. In the initial phase of the Second World War, after the
invasion of the Wehrmacht, large strata of its social body had held a
cooperative attitude with the Axis forces, and often hindered the Red Army
with an asymmetrical warfare "on three fronts".
This ambivalence has always characterized the Ukrainian bourgeoisie: from
2000 until 2014, pro-Russian and anti-Russian presidents alternated in
government, according to the oscillations of the opportunity of the
moment.
A pro-Russian president twice was elected then kicked out "by popular
vote", at least according to the Western vulgate, first, in 2004 by the
so-called "Orange Revolution", then in 2014 by the so-called "Euromaidan
Movement", which developed from December 2013 to February 2014 that,
depending on pro-Western or pro-Russian readings, has been described as a
people’s insurrection or as a coup d’état by paramilitary organizations
inspired and funded by the US to destabilize in a pro-Western sense an
already complex and difficult situation of balance, with episodes of
frenzied violence, culminating in the Odessa massacre, passed over in
silence but perpetrated by Ukrainian paramilitary militias.
The Russian and Ukrainian bourgeois - called "oligarchs", as if they were
different from the big and powerful bourgeois of the West - are twin
brothers of the same class, even if they are, temporarily, on different
sides of the front. Like the Russian and Ukrainian proletarians, forcibly
forced onto enemy fronts.
The Donbass
Even in the two Ukrainian areas to the east, on the border with Russia,
the so-called separatist Russian-speaking republics, there are equally
bourgeois linked to their Russian brothers, and Russian-speaking
proletarians oppressed by bourgeois who speak their language.
The alleged "irredentist" insurrection of those territories wanted to
connote it as a national movement to be recognized as autonomous states.
There was a bloody local war fought for many years. Two ceasefire
agreements were drawn up between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, under the
aegis of the OSCE in Minsk in 2014 and 2015. However, the clashes never
ceased.
At the end of February 2014 with a military coup Russia regained the
Crimean peninsula which was incorporated into the Federation. Which for
the two separatist areas of Donbass and Lugansk did not happen. There was
no formal recognition of these two new republics on the Russian side
either, although the arms supplies did not cease.
NATO pressure
The Ukrainian state, having undergone the amputation of Crimea, in its
shiny new democratic regime born from the "popular movements" of 2014, has
never ceased the violent political repressions against Russian-speaking
people, but also against parties of the parliamentary arch, up to their
outlawing, with the repression of any organization opposed to the
government, whether legal or illegal. These are the wonders of the new
democracy, similar to the West.
The Ukrainian bourgeoisie, no better than the others, has found it
convenient to sell itself to the Americans. And more than that, on its way
to the West, it sold the underpaid labor of its proletarians to the
capitalists of Europe. Then it demanded entry into the European Union.
But above all, the American "protectors" demanded NATO membership, which,
among other corruptions, would have guaranteed a bulwark against the bulky
neighbor. At least these were the unspoken hopes. For the soggy
bourgeoisie of Ukraine, the Western one was an obliged choice.
After all, in an official way, until 2014 NATO had a constant presence in
the organization and training of the ruined Ukrainian army. It is clear
that they were working on a widening of the clash from local for the
separatist republics to an open and general conflict.
The presence of Western military structures is an important Atlantic
outpost in Ukrainian territory, even if temporarily outside the alliance.
In more recent times even making it an operational zone of NATO exercises,
under the presidency of the docile former actor Zelensky (years 2020-21),
provocative operations to put pressure on the Russian neighbor.
Against the proletariat in Ukraine
The proletariat, artificially distinguished into Russian speakers and
Ukrainian speakers, is suffering, along with the petty bourgeoisie, also
overwhelmed by economic crisis and nationalist drunkenness, all the
effects of this choice of field when, at the invasion of the Russian army,
the Ukrainian bourgeoisie decided on a hysterical call to arms, to resist
to the last man, calling for a partisan war, a people’s war against the
invader.
In reality the working class of Ukraine would have nothing to lose from
an immediate surrender of its bourgeoisie in the face of the Russian
invasion. Symmetrically the workers of Russia have nothing to gain from a
victory of their own state in Ukraine.
But the bourgeoisie of Ukraine wanted the war, just as their Western
"protectors" want it, and just as the Russian bourgeoisie wants it.
All the bourgeoisies at stake, Russian, Ukrainian and the others, are
aware of and responsible for the terrifying consequences of that decision,
which has shifted the theater of war to the cities, where the
impossibility of identifying the front provokes indiscriminate massacres,
where every building can become a point of resistance, forcing the
attacker to bring death and destruction.
Horror becomes an instrument of propaganda for the side that is in
defense, and for those who support it safely far from the bloody fronts.
Hysterical propaganda to excite the spectacular western public, or to
orient it to a war of wider proportions, to stimulate the infamous
alternative "either with Putin or with Ukraine".
The internationalist task of the communists
The media fury of the West – quite similar to that of the Russian
Motherland – has no equal in this war, where each of the two imperialisms
attributes to the other every horror and responsibility for the slaughter.
Every war between states is a war against the proletariat, national and
international, to whom go the grief, the misery, and finally the slave
labor for the reconstruction of the economy of capital, within states
which, victorious or defeated and dismembered, always remain the
instrument of bourgeois domination.
But the war of the capitals could give to the international proletariat
the opportunity to stop the bloody madness of the bourgeoisie: by
destroying capitalism, in a solidary lifting of the workers of all
countries.
The Party of the Revolution, therefore, denounces the imperialist war.
The solution is not with any of the contending imperial parties, but
against one and the other.
To the world proletariat, which today watches astonished at the unfolding
of the deadly convulsions of the mode of production based on capital, we
once again point out the way to its redemption: against war between states
for war between classes!
This is the way, marked and certain.
The rearmament of the German State with the support of parties and trade unions
The German economy is one of the most exposed to the repercussions of the
war in Ukraine.
For now, the negative effects on the EU of sanctions are limited, but if
they were extended to oil and gas, or if Russia cut off supplies, the
effect would be greater. The Economist Intelligence Unit predicts that in
2022 the war in Ukraine will reduce German GDP by 0.8%, compared to 0.7%
in France and 1% in Italy.
In Germany, the global surge in commodity prices is already being
observed: in February, the wholesale cost of energy increased by 130%, gas
prices tripled and food supplies are also at risk. Inflation is expected
to rise to 6.2%, while wages will not keep pace: thus, as elsewhere in
Europe, the working class will be hardest hit.
Germany is Russia’s second largest trading partner for imports (first is
China): it receives 10% of Russian exports. It is 40-50% dependent on
Russia for hydrocarbons: industry and domestic consumption depend on cheap
Russian gas. In addition, an increase in bill prices could lead to claims
for wage increases. Thus, the German bourgeoisie is reluctant to accept
the imposition of more sanctions on Russia, as demanded by the Ukrainian
government and the United States.
It is considered unlikely that Russia will cut off gas supplies. Shifting
sales to third parties, particularly China and India, would mean accepting
a large reduction in price, and thus revenue. However, on March 29, the
German government announced contingency plans in case of a severe
reduction or blockage in supplies.
The Federal Republic’s relations with Russia date back to Willi Brandt’s
"Ostpolitik" in the seventies of the last century, when an attempt was
made to ease tensions within the divided Germany and reduce German
dependence on the USA.
Meanwhile, the German bourgeoisie, behind the current "red-green-yellow"
government, is taking advantage of the geopolitical situation to increase
military spending. Before the invasion of Ukraine this decision would have
been unacceptable to large sections of the population. At the end of
February, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced that the military budget
will be tripled: the largest German rearmament plan since World War II.
The goal is to bring it to at least 2% of GDP. The decision to buy dozens
of F-35 stealth bombers is now followed by a plan for national missile
defense. A delegation of politicians went to Israel to negotiate the
purchase of the US-Israeli long-range system Arrow 3. The German
bourgeoisie has a clear intention to establish itself militarily,
replacing Britain and France as the leading military power in Europe.
This rearmament policy has the support of the entire parliamentary
spectrum. Even the "left-wing" party Die Linke, which is losing support,
has jumped on the war bandwagon, so much so that its founder, Oskar
Lafontaine, has resigned in protest. But in general, all "leftist" parties
and groups have abruptly swerved towards militarism and in support of the
war: even the Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, of the Greens, who
flaunted feminist and climate and human rights positions!
In the lower echelons, as in 2015, there was an attitude of compassion and
welcome toward Ukrainian refugees, some 300,000 of them, most of whom
arrived by train to Berlin via Poland, only to be sorted across the
country, many in temporary housing.
But unlike in 2015, this outpouring of solidarity is accompanied by
poisonous pro-Ukrainian nationalism - yellow-blue flags fly everywhere on
public buildings - and anti-Russian animosity. The bourgeois media and the
state apparatus work at full capacity to channel the common instinct of
solidarity towards nationalistic resentments. The reception of refugees
falls largely on the spontaneous efforts of the population, but are taken
up by politicians and businesses. Celebrities participate in events of
ideological propaganda, for "democracy" and "freedom", if not for explicit
commercial interests. Authorities of the Ukrainian state, sports
champions, television comedians, and pop artists appear on video, all of
whom suddenly and shamelessly removed "the flowers from the cannons".
In spite of this smokescreen, aimed at getting the working class to accept
rearmament, the Ukrainian government, obedient spokesman for the American
master, called the visit to Kiev of German President Frank-Walter
Steinmeier "unwelcome", as he would have been too friendly to Russia.
Indeed, which side will Germany ultimately take? However, certainly,
against the proletariat, first and foremost German.
According to a recent poll (for what it’s worth, but in the meantime they
let it be known...) still more than half of Germans would oppose a total
embargo of fuel imports from Russia, despite the incessant propaganda that
they would "finance Putin’s war machine". The reality is that the working
class knows that, one way or another, it will end up bearing the brunt of
the crisis.
The main industrial unions, IG Metall, IG BCE and IG Bau, have asked the
government for emergency funds, not for the working class but to protect
energy-intensive industries such as automobiles from bankruptcy. They see
the lack of liquidity and reduced competitiveness of companies compared to
other countries as a serious threat to jobs.
In Ford’s international restructuring there is already conflict between
the union at the Saarlouis plant in Germany and the one in Valencia: the
increase in energy prices puts the Spaniard at an advantage.
The German trade unions are thus playing their traditional role of ally of
national capital and enemy of the international proletariat. Of course,
they are also concerned that the rising cost of living will lead their
members to demand more combative action.
In Russia: God, Homeland and Family
The Russian Patriarch Kirill, head of the Orthodox Church, regarding
the invasion of Ukraine, said in a sermon that it is a patriotic war
(and we did not doubt it), and also a crusade against the danger
represented by the West and its gay lobbies. The Patriarch of All
Russia, with his Church, thus stands as a defender not only of the
homeland of the Russians, but also of their sexual inclinations.
The relationship between Church and State in Russia has gone through
various phases. If after the October Revolution the Russian Orthodox
Church, an integral part of Tsarist power, showed horror for atheistic
and materialistic communism, as well as confiscator of its immense
lands and other wealth, after the prevalence of the Stalinist
counterrevolution, to better mobilize the population, during the
Second World War the alliance between throne and altar was
reconstituted, in the name of the homeland, where the throne commanded
and the altar obeyed, all to mutual advantage.
Today, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, already a country with
full capitalism, but unable to withstand Western competition, this
alliance has taken on different traits due to the different balance of
power between the parties: now the Church has recovered all its
function and we see the "little father" Putin, atheist and former
national-communist, lavishing himself in prostrations and signs of the
cross in countless religious ceremonies, possibly next to the
patriarch. Paraphrasing Henry IV, Moscow is worth a mass.
We have nothing to say to the patriarch, who performs his function of
reactionary ideological cement of Russian patriotism, its capitalism
and its imperialism.
After all, the responsibility of spreading such high words is
entirely ours, of the working class, which has not yet reached the
strength and determination to beat up those "in the guise of rapacious
wolves". Dante Alighieri, in the Canto XXVII of Paradise,
apostrophizes "those who usurp on earth my place... fatt’ha del
cimitero mio cloaca del sangue e della puzza".
After the proletarian seizure of power there will be no freedom of
expression for the coryphaeus of capitalism, with or without cassock.
Ukraine and the Question of Fascism
Both sides
of the War in Ukraine use fascism in various ways to serve
their own ends. Ukraine is not a fascist or Nazi state in
any reasonable sense (it is a bourgeois national state,
and even has a Jewish president), but it uses the
influential Ukrainian fascist movement to its own ends.
The Ukrainian National Guard contains an explicitly Nazi
unit, the Azov Battalion (which has actually grown into a
regiment). Azov ist paramilitary organization during the
2014 protests that brought down the Yanukovych government.
It was incorporated into the official National Guard,
which is the Ukrainian gendarmerie,
when the pro-NATO regime was constituted. It continues to
do the state’s dirty work in Eastern Ukraine, while
appealing to the fascism, latent or explicit, that
permeates Ukrainian nationalism.
Russia uses the same strategy. There are significant fascist and Nazi
elements in contemporary Russian nationalism, along with a current of
antisemitism that has survived since the Tsarist period. Russia also
provides clandestine support to fascist movements in other countries
in order to destabilize them. At the same time, the Russian government
would never be caught taking explicitly fascistic positions because
postwar Russian imperialism is tied up in the victory against the
Nazis.
The United States is, of course, no stranger to supporting fascist
movements as the situation requires. Following the Maidan protests in
2014, it promoted every chauvinistic nationalist movement that could
possibly take a pro-US slant. US journalists praise White Army
pogromists and Nazi collaborators as Ukrainian national heroes. The US
government previously provided weapons to the Azov Battalion, and has
just decided to do so again. Yet the US government cannot possibly
take a pro-fascist position for the same reason as the Russian
government: the victory against Nazi Germany in WW2 is central to US
imperialism.
Every player in the conflict uses fascist and Nazi comparisons to its
own advantage. The Ukrainian government and its supporters compare the
Russian state in 2022 to the Nazi state in 1938 (even as they use
their own fascist regiment against the Russians). The United States
and the rest of NATO use the same comparison to justify their role in
escalating the conflict. Some have explicitly made comparisons to the
Munich Agreement of 1938, stating that NATO cannot "appease" the
Russians like the Allies appeased Hitler. On the other side of the
conflict (to the extent that any bourgeois war has distinct sides),
the Russian state attempts to justify its invasion of Ukraine under
the pretext of "denazifying" the country and stopping a "genocide" of
Russian speakers in Ukraine (entirely fictional, of course).
This propaganda regarding fascism is absurd. There is really no
fascist threat in Europe in 2022: fascism is already here, always hidden and bred by democracy. The Ukrainian, Russian, and US
bourgeoisies do not need the tool of fascism now because the
proletariat is weak. They only talk about fascism now because it is a
convenient way to justify imperialism – any imperialism, as it turns
out. Even German rearmament can now be justified by the fascist
menace. O tempora, o mores!.
Turkey as Mediator:
The Regional Imperialist Power Tries to Turn a Diplomatic Crisis into Opportunity
The war in Ukraine has once again brought Turkey’s
role as a rising regional imperialist power to the fore
Turkey was one of the first countries to join NATO after the end of the
Second World War, in 1952, despite the neutrality maintained by the
Kemalist İnönü government during the second imperialist war and the
ambiguous attitude towards Hitler’s Germany. US diplomacy had understood
the importance of Turkey in the strategy of encircling the Eastern bloc
on the southern flank and thought it well to make it an ally. In turn,
Turkey’s new pro-Western Menderes government felt the need for NATO’s
protection against a possible Russian threat, and the alliance came with
the cost of Turkey’s participation in the Korean war with a total force
of 35,000 soldiers, over 700 of whom died according to official figures.
Over the years, the Turkish army has become the largest within NATO
after the US but military spending has always remained rather limited.
Moreover, historically the army has been used above all in maintaining
order within the complex country first against Kurdish rebellions;
then through a number of coups, the most significant ones being
against the Menderes government in 1960 and against the political
chaos as well as increased workers’ militancy in 1980, and afterward
again to fight the Kurdish insurgency lead by the PKK. In any case,
aside from the invasion of Northern Cyprus in 1973 by the
left-Kemalist Ecevit government and repeated “operations” into
Southern Kurdistan, the Turkish army was for the most part not used as
an instrument of aggression towards the outside.
In recent years, things have changed profoundly. The Turkish government
lead by Erdoğan has started a policy of Islamic nationalism by putting
itself forward as a regional imperialist power. At the same time it has
successfully sought to build a national arms manufacturing industry by
trying to free itself from the cumbersome presence of the United States,
to seek a freer and more independent national policy.
The 2016 coup attempt lead by the Gülen cult, Erdoğan’s former allies,
for which Erdoğan implicitly blamed the United States, accentuated
Istanbul’s rapprochement with Moscow. The acquisition of the S400
anti-missile system from Moscow and the consequent refusal of the US
to supply Turkey with the F35 fighters already partially paid for, has
exacerbated tensions between the two countries.
Meanwhile, the Turkish government has been trying to expand its
influence in Arab countries, Africa and the Mediterranean, alarming not
only Egypt, but also Greece and France. Moreover, due to the fact that
Erdoğan’s Turkey opposed the Esad government in Syria and the Libyan
National Army lead by Haftar in Libya, both Russian allies, its
relations with Moscow remained contradictory.
The war in Ukraine has put Turkish diplomacy in a serious crisis.
Despite finding itself on the opposite side in the regional conflicts
mentioned above, the Turkish government has good relations with Moscow
and, above all, trade between the two countries and the continued
arrival of Russian tourists are very important for the Turkish
economy. Russia not only supplies armaments but is building a nuclear
power plant in Turkey and supplies gas. However, Turkey also has good
relations with Ukraine with which it collaborates precisely in the
strategic armaments sector.
A break in relations with the Russian Federation would certainly create
new problems for the Turkish economy, already plunged into a deep crisis
and further aggravate the conditions of the proletariat severely
affected by inflation. In fact, an increase in the price of energy could
only accelerate the inflation process.For now, Turkey continues to keep
its feet in two shoes: it refuses to adopt economic sanctions against
Russia and has not closed its skies to Russian flights, at the same time
it continues to supply arms to Ukraine. The Turkish government has tried
to get out of the corner by proposing itself as a mediator in the search
for a peace agreement. Though an agreement between Russia and Ukraine
seems quite unlikely for now, both countries have so far been eager to
accept Turkey’s role as a mediator, and Ukrainian leader Zelensky even
proposed Turkey be a guarantor of peace if an agreement is ever reached.
An important point to be considered is that due to the increasingly
worsening economic crisis, the popularity of Erdoğan’s Islamist
Justice and Development Party and his fascist allies are significantly
dropping and the six party alliance lead by the Kemalist social
democratic Republican People’s Party and the dissident fascist Good
Party are on the rise. Akşener, the leader of the Good Party has
already openly condemned Erdoğan for not doing enough for Ukraine, and
the social democrats are known to have much better relations with the
United States, the United Kingdom and above all the European Union. As
the United States tries to do all it can with the aim of weakening the
Russian adversary as much as possible, Washington’s side in the next
Turkish elections, scheduled for 2023, seems clear. In turn, if the
war between Russia and Ukraine is still going on by then, a new
Turkish government lead by the current opposition will surely move
firmly towards the West, and consequently against Russia, hoping that
mending disrupted economic ties with the West will make up for
disrupting economic ties with Russia.
If peace under capitalism is when the next war is being plotted, peace
negotiations are when the coming battles planned. Turkey has already
assumed an important role in the imperialist war between Russia and
Ukraine by playing the mediator and saving face for both countries as
well as itself, while preparing to better position itself for the
conflicts of the future.
From the Archive of the Left
The Dilemma is not War or Peace but War or Revolution
By the American Fraction of the Left Communist International (1950).Initially published in the Autumn-Winter 1950 issue of “The Internationalist”, a publication of the Italian communist left in the U.S.
Public opinion is preoccupied at present with a great question: When
will the next world war break out?
The possibility of a new international conflict is not denied by
anybody. Everybody is concerned about it. They understand in a
situation of this kind that the politicians who speak of a right to
capture the masses for peace, already feel their skin burnt from the
effects of atom bomb radiation. Everybody hesitates to take a position
in favor of a new war. Demagogic propositions are advanced to conjure
away the coming conflicts: disarmament, outlawing the atomic bomb,
mutual appeasement, peace movements, or strengthening the U.N.O.
(United Nations Organization). For the working class to think of
opposing war by these methods is equal to the practice of magic, but
certainly not the basis of the struggle against war.
It is clear that Russia and her allies are not fighting against war.
They simply aim to neutralize the military and economic force of their
adversaries. Only in that sense does Stalinism operate all over the
world. It is not against the use of the atomic bomb. This would then
sanctify their use of it second, in retaliation. On the other hand,
neither do they take the peace movement very seriously, the aim of
which is not the transformation of the capitalist social order, but
simply to maintain conditions as they exist at present.
The genuine Marxists must not pose the problem in the questions: Will
there be a New World War? To the genuine Marxists, the conflict is
inevitable as long as capitalist society exists. They, the Marxists,
are the unique workers for peace through the struggle for the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the proletarian revolution. They
reject, therefore, the hypocritical and false pacifist crusade,
denounce it and refuse to join with it in any manner whatsoever. The
claim that it is possible to secure peace or conjure away war is the
refuge of all “the men of good will” and therefore also, of the
bourgeoisie. Such a claim is treason to and proof of the abandonment
of the interests of the working class.
The work of political clarification that qualities as revolutionary
must be based on the following:
It must anticipate the end of the period in which the workers are
forced to fight for this or that imperialist antagonist. It must
assert in a most explicit manner that the working class will not
fight for any of these, and refuse in every case to yield to the
deceit and trickery of Imperialist war.
They do not support any victor, but profit from the crisis of the
world bourgeoisie in order to prepare and lead to the
revolutionary struggle. The proletariat recognizes the two
adversaries only as their class enemies and in both cases, there
is only one kind of politics to follow behind either fronts:
revolutionary defeatism.
In face of the attempt to line up the masses physically and
spiritually for the war, the Marxists call upon them to refuse to
shed their blood a for the cause of any Imperialism whatsoever,
and to work instead not for the bloody victory of this or that
brigand, but for the victory of the revolutionary proletariat.
There is no greater task for the real revolutionary than to make
clear to the workers that they have nothing to defend in capitalist
society, and that they should not seek to support this or that
Imperialism that permits a more easy life. To the proletariat, whoever
gives support to the war betrays their cause. The proletariat has no
interest in defending anybody in this conflict, or any other
Imperialist conflagration. It has only one interest: to conquer the
peace by the only possible method: Revolution!
The first American trade union for Amazon workers is born
(updated June 13)
On April 1, more than 2,500 workers at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, NY voted to unionize with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). The result was unexpected by most outside observers. Indeed, no other union has yet managed to organize Amazon workers despite multiple attempts. Let’s briefly examine the origins of the ALU to illuminate the reasons for its recent success.
Origins
The story begins two years ago when on March 30, 2020 – in the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic – a small group of JFK8 employees organized a walkout from the warehouse, demanding measures to protect workers from the virus. The company responded by disciplining the organizers. One such organizer – a 32-year-old African American employed at Amazon since 2015 – who later became the head of the ALU, was fired on the false pretense of violating quarantine protocols.
The common experience of repression brought these workers together and forged within them a clear consciousness of the irreconcilable antagonism between the worker and the boss, as well as an iron, righteous will for retribution against the company. The ALU has put forward 16 immediate demands published on the union’s website including:
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Paid time off for those injured at work.
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A 7.5% raise for all workers.
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Reinstatement of 20-minute breaks, which were recently cut by 5 minutes.
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Free transportation to and from work on a private shuttle.
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Unpaid time counted in minutes instead of hours, so a delay of a few minutes isn’t rounded up to an hour.
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An end to union-busting behavior, such as the two instances in which Amazon called the police to forcibly stop organizing activities and arrest organizers; removal of all anti-union propaganda.
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Closure of the warehouse during extreme weather events.
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Abolition of the ban on personal phones.
“Amazon has spent millions on millions of dollars trying to stop the ALU. It would take only a fraction of that to pay every JFK8 worker $30 an hour”, said the union’s leader. In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx pointed out that bourgeois economists are perplexed by workers’ willingness to sacrifice their wages in order to defend their trade unions. The same is true for the bosses, who are willing to sacrifice profits in order to crush the unions. Both sides know that the final outcome of the class struggle is not determined by a single battle.
The everyday struggle of workers against capital, exacerbated by the global economic crisis, pushed forward natural leaders from among the masses, ready to fight for their class interests by whatever means and aware of the conditions of the economic struggle.
Witnessing the abortive certification drive by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL, these worker-leaders recognized the limitations of top-down organizing by collaborationist national associations and opted for a strategy based on grassroots organizing of an independent, rank-and-file association instead. One of the original founders personally travelled to Alabama to observe the campaign:
«First of all, you know, they’re an established union with a limited amount of Amazon workers that are actually organizing […] So we felt like there was a lot of missed opportunities – just them, like not really communicating with the workers as much as we thought they should […] So, you know, when we took our organization efforts on, we just decided that, you know, Amazon workers need to organize other Amazon workers».
As the movement grew, organizers also took lessons from the rich history of the American labor movement – in particular, IWW and CIO organizing in the early 20th century – and put their newfound knowledge to use in action. According to an ALU organizing committee member and employee at JFK 8:
«We studied the history of how the first major unions were built […] We read William Z. Foster’s Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry (a must-read, seriously) […] I think this union shows the true possibility of what is before us, as a labor movement – if we just remember how to do it».
The result was the Amazon Labor Union. A great achievement indeed! Now the union has set its sights on organizing other warehouses in New York and obtaining a contract.
Appraisal
Even from the incomplete account presented above, it is clear what is praise-worthy about the ALU:
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Its passionate proletarian culture, united around ambitious goals and fierce opposition to the bourgeoisie.
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Its strong spirit of self-reliance, with initiative emanating from the rank-and-file becoming desire for action on a strict class basis.
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Its humble eagerness for education through the experience of one’s contemporaries and historical forebearers, in addition to one’s own experience.
Amazon’s behavior is certainly reprehensible, but it is not beyond explanation. The owners and managers are ruthless because economic competition is a powerful force encouraging people to treat other people (and themselves) as objects to be exploited for private interests, rather than as human beings. Everyone is a participant in this competition, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the same phenomenon is at work across the nation and the world, as evidenced by the recent struggle of BNSF workers against the “Hi-Viz” attendance policy. Unification of these and all similar struggles is the key to the victory of the workers. In conclusion, therefore, our party offers the following advice to strengthen the ALU and continue to conduct class struggle in the interests of the workers:
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Work with other unions to organize Amazon – RWDSU and especially Teamsters – despite their shortcomings.
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Coordinate labor actions with workers at other companies such as employees at BNSF and UPS, dock workers and postal workers – perhaps starting with upcoming contract renewals (e.g., the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Teamsters); strive towards a national logistics strike, which would prove the enormous power of the working class and open all kinds of possibilities.
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Communicate with trade unions and workers at the international level, including countries where Amazon is already organized; aspire to organize international strikes to fight transnational corporations and overcome competition between workers in different countries.
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Advance as a political demand the abolition of all limits to the freedoms to strike and organize.
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Employ the methods of class struggle: generalize strikes as much as possible and establish pickets in front of the company gates; refuse to forfeit those weapons, as for instance through a no-strike clause in a contract.
The Starbucks Campaign:
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Much has been made lately of the news of
the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is Starbucks Workers United
which, in stark contrast to the 0-2 record of the Retail, Wholesale
and Department Store Union’s efforts to unionize Amazon, has enjoyed
success after success. The giant coffee chain is known for being one
of the better food-service retail outlets, at least in terms of pay
and benefits, and tries to maintain an image of being a
worker-friendly company. Nevertheless, not all is as it seems.
The Good
First, it is important to recognize the
fact that Starbucks Workers United has been doing extremely well.
Since beginning their campaign last summer, in the space of
approximately six months, they have successfully unionized 21 of the
23 Starbucks facilities at which they have held elections. At one
location, the vote was definitively against, and at the other, the
NLRB was unable to call the election. Approximately 200 stores have
petitioned for an election so far this year. SWU’s successes are not
limited to regular Starbucks stores, either – at least one Roastery has
also joined the union.
Moreover, having a union is often positive.
The union is the proletariat’s vehicle for economic struggle against
the bourgeoisie, and is capable of extracting concessions such as
increased wages, more time off, benefits, etc. While none of these
things mean the end of capital, they are nevertheless positive goods.
The struggle over these issues, furthermore, teaches the proletariat
how to fight as a class; it demonstrates that it is only through
combined struggle that the proletariat is capable of exercising its
power, and lays bare the antagonism between proletarian and bourgeois.
It is the school of the proletarian revolution.
The fact that SWU is doing so well is clear
proof of the lie that Starbucks spreads about itself. It constantly
cries that it wants a direct relationship between itself and its
employees, as if a corporation, an impersonal force, could have a
direct relationship with anyone. It seeks to conceal the fact that the
wages and benefits it offers were won through previous struggle. It’s
also evidence that SWU is not simply treating the workers as passive
observers, and is engaging them in the struggle.
The Bad
Starbucks has no intention of taking this lying down. The CEO has been
sacked and Howard Schulz is now back in command, for the third time.
Schulz has had success in beating unionization campaigns in the past.
The company is no stranger to union-busting. It has defeated both the
UFCW and IWW, through characteristically ruthless tactics. It has
fired workers, brought in scabs at higher wages than its current
employees – with the clear implication that the workers joining the
union are ungrateful and could be getting more if they would just
stop – and spread anti-union propaganda. Efforts to buy off workers by
offering more perks, and perhaps a small raise, would not be
unprecedented, either.
Moreover, SWU is known to employ salts, union organizers who get jobs
for the sole purpose of organizing a workplace, typically with no
intention of maintaining their employment once the shop is organized.
This can weaken the campaign as it has a strong potential to undermine
workers’ confidence in the union, and lowers the actual number of
workers on board with the union. Indeed, salts exist for the purpose
of providing leadership within the shop to unionize, and, once a salt
leaves or gets fired, leadership disappears. Organic leadership
developed from workers whose intention to keep the job is not tenuous
and tied specifically to their ability to organize there provides a
solid foundation for lasting power.
The Ugly
Now we must turn to the heart of the question: is SWU the kind of
union that will struggle for the workers that make it up, or is it
merely capitalizing on discontent with no real intent of leading the
struggle? Starbucks appears to be a particularly hot shop currently,
which SWU is exploiting for its parent union, Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), a union notorious for its top-down
approach to unionism, and the recently-departed President, Andy Stern,
has established his own union-busting consulting company. Stern was
notorious for shoving terrible contracts down members’ throats, a
practice which has not significantly abated since his departure. SEIU
is perhaps the model of the American regime union, a labor cop, acting
as an agent of the state in imposing capitalist work discipline on its
members.
The commitment of SWU to the shop-by-shop bargaining approach, the
scheme envisioned by the most conservative forces of American labor
and endorsed by the bourgeoisie, allows fissures between shops to
persist and grow, divisions that can and will be exploited by the
bosses. By allowing workers to bargain piecemeal, their combined power
cannot be wielded against Starbucks, leaving them weaker than if they
all spoke with the same voice. By permitting unequal treatment between
shops, they leave themselves open to defeat in detail.
Moreover, the approach of unions such as SEIU is to sign away the
power of workers to withhold their labor, the most powerful weapon
they possess. The rule in such unions is “work now, grieve later;”
which, all too often, translates into “just work and stop
complaining”. While pursuing grievances with the NLRB is not
intrinsically wrong, this process is byzantine, the domain of
bureaucrats and lawyers, and cannot stop ongoing abuses, much less
prevent future ones. Workers who interface with this process quickly
become aware of this fact, and by signing away the right to strike or
take other shopfloor action (the law effectively contemplates any
concerted action as a strike), they become helpless in the face of
their bosses’ willful and continuous disregard for the law.
Regime unions such as SEIU also divert workers’ struggle into the
swamp of electoralism. Joined at the hip with the Democratic Party,
they seek salvation through the very state whose laws bind them to
servitude and degradation. Proletarians are aware that the Democratic
Party cannot be trusted, and is just as much an enemy of their class
as the Republicans Party. This encourages a false image of the state
as a neutral actor, which can be made more friendly to them by
electing the right people to office, rather than revealing it for what
it is, namely the executive committee of the bourgeoisie.
As union density continues to decline through this historic
relationship of subjection to the interests of capital, the labor
lieutenants of the captains of industry fatten themselves at the
expense of those whose interests they purport to represent. Avid
seekers of labor peace, they actively restrain the struggle of the
worker to better his condition. Where the opportunity presents itself
for these piecards to advance the interests of the working class, they
choose the opposite.
The Solution
As we have consistently maintained, such organizations must be
dismantled and destroyed. We repeat again that unions are vital organs
of economic struggle for the proletariat, but regime unions are worse
than useless for this struggle. They are impediments, obstacles along
the march to victory that must be removed. No more can we speak of
these individuals’ acts as a siren-call. We must now speak of a
cacophony. The purpose is not to draw us onto a different line of
march, but to drown out the clarion call of the correct line of the
class union.
Only by seeking each other out and amplifying our voices together can
we defeat the bourgeoisie and fulfill our historic destiny. Under the
leadership of the class party, united into a class union, victory is
possible. Communism will – communism must – win.
